Kazuo Ishiguro's novel "Never Let Me Go"
Kazuo Ishiguro's novel "Never Let Me Go" is about the youngsters of Hailsham House who, despite the fact that their lifestyle appears to be pleasurable, face insurmountable obstacles in their lives due to peer pressure.
The Role of Hailsham
The school encourages youngsters to express themselves freely via art and other activities that promote healthy living. Despite the emphasis on regular medical check-ups and education on the dangers of drugs and smoking, their world is filled with perplexing second-hand feel. The ownership of everything is in junk form; and the teaching materials are rudimentary, something that may bring a feeling that the care of the kids is being done cheaply (Ishiguro).
The Fear of the Woods
The fate of the children demonstrates what the author terms as "fear of the woods." The children are donors of organs that are destined to be broken down into spares. Therefore, Hailsham acts as a preparatory school to make them psychologically ready for the future donations and install a mechanism of self-repression (Park).
Plot and Themes
From the novel, the plot is apparently far-fetched from the England's happenings of the 1990s. An in-depth indicates that the story is an extrapolation of a society which grooms its members to serve others by paying an ultimate price.
The Quiet Sense of Duty
Kathy who is the main character in the novel, together with her peers seems to act with a quiet sense of duty. The action of the characters is synonymous to those of witnessed in The Remains of the Day. By allowing Kathy to tell the story about her world of dystopian, the novel comes out as a tale of dangers acquiescence and the dangers associated with the desires to have a high cost of living for the wrong cause.
The Love Triangle
From the stories of Tommy, Ruth, and Kathy, and the love triangle that began at Hailsham. The Author assigns responsibility to each character. Ruth is the controller while Tommy has tempers that are hard to control. With the mixed personalities, the two characters hope that love would save them, based on the belief that love or art can get one a deferral (Ishiguro). On the other hand, Kathy is portrayed as a career and a profession. Kathy does not allow her friends go even after watching them break against the inevitable. After going through the experiences at Hailsham, the three kids develop from a puzzled cohort to confused young adults. Because they had been made to believe that life is all about sitting back and waiting to donate, their lives are filled with a prolonged limbo, waiting for the call to give.
Themes of Curiosity and Suspension
As witnessed in the article, the three characters represent a world that is both funny and touching. "The children stare into the window of an ordinary office and wonder about the cleanliness the modern space" (Ishiguro). The implication here is that the clones try to view the society that made them, but they fail to understand the socio-economic structures of the communities from which they have originated. Readers of the novel find themselves in the same situation. We are forced to guess at what the character does not know. By doing this, the author initiates an intense curiosity into the people who then propels them to continue reading to find a better understanding. The primary aim of the writer of the novel here is to demonstrate how young people sometimes strive to make a livelihood out of an economic resource or talent on offer. To an extent, the sense of suspension witnessed in the novel is pervasive as the children neither make nor understand the rules (Park). The characters are snobbish about the properties and are also as puzzled as any other person.
Questions and Rhetoric
If the setting were to be considered as that of the early 1990's, then the article could fit the description of a science of fiction. Apparently, there is no science in this case. Many questions than answers arise. If the clones have to "donate" their body parts, how are they kept alive? In the modern society, it is imaginable who would manage to afford such kind of medicine to support the lives of clones. The author significantly fails to provide answers to such questions; indeed, the issues appear to be more rhetorical than before. The answers to the questions even fail to come up naturally, thus, throwing back the novel to the moral position of cloning (Park).
Erosion of Hope and Making a Living
It is true that Ishiguro has made a significant contribution to the cloning debates; however, the aspects of cloning as portrayed in the article is apparently subtle, and eye candy. Therefore, it is arguable that the novel is about a steady erosion of hope through repression- life is full of individuals who are always ready to fail others, become old and fall to pieces. While keeping calm is imperative in life, it doesn't change much in an individual's life. The article has nothing to do with cloning or clone at all; it is all about keeping calm and being keen to make a living out of the little opportunities that nature provides.
Work Cited
Park Sørensen, Eli. "Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro." MovableType 1 (2005).
Ishiguro, Kazuo. The remains of the day. Vintage, 2010.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never let me go. Ernst Klett Sprachen, 2012.
